625
from Summer Story
and now here I am
spending my time,
as the saying goes,
watching until the watching turns into feeling,
so that I feel I am myself
a small bird
with a terrible hunger,
with a thin beak probing and dipping
and a heart that races so fast
it is only a heartbeat ahead of breaking-
and I am the hunger and the assuagement,
and also I am the leaves and the blossoms,
and, like them, I am full of delight, and shaking.
Mary Oliver
and now here I am
spending my time,
as the saying goes,
watching until the watching turns into feeling,
so that I feel I am myself
a small bird
with a terrible hunger,
with a thin beak probing and dipping
and a heart that races so fast
it is only a heartbeat ahead of breaking-
and I am the hunger and the assuagement,
and also I am the leaves and the blossoms,
and, like them, I am full of delight, and shaking.
Mary Oliver